Optimized Over-The-Top Delivery of Content for Linear Services

ABSTRACT

A method for providing content as a linear content stream. The method comprises receiving and segregating the content into data packages, identifying each data package with a unique signature, and responsive to a request from a receiving system, receiving first data packages at the receiving system. A modified manifest that identifies each data package according to its unique signature is created. The manifest indicates a location for each data package, and instructs the order in which to assemble identified data packages to create the linear content stream. The linear content stream is created as directed by the modified manifest. Redundant data packages within the first data packages are excluded from the modified manifest and thereby excluded from the linear content stream. White spaces of open time intervals are created in the linear data stream by omission of the redundant data packages and filled with alternative content.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. 119(e) to theprovisional patent application filed on Dec. 24, 2021 and assignedapplication No. 63/293745. This provisional patent application isincorporated herein in its entirety.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to a linear content delivery system ornetwork, leveraging fingerprinting of time intervals of content,detection of redundant content, and dynamic content storage to optimizedelivery costs, content quality, and network resiliency.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Linear delivery of content is defined in the world of media andentertainment by the structure of the content, that is, a continuous,unbroken and uninterrupted stream of information (content) that iscarefully coordinated and delivered synchronously between a sender and areceiver. Today's linear video delivery systems are expensive andcomplex, but most importantly, they are unable to create unique variantsof the content streams.

A traditional premium channel, for example, may use a satellite systemas the linear delivery mechanism. While a satellite delivery system isvery expensive, it is also very efficient delivering one-to-many data orcontent streams, where all receivers or recipients receive the samecontent. This lack of flexibility in the delivery system means that allcontent modification must be done at the source and all content (i.e.,the same content) must be constantly delivered across the entirety ofthe network.

A typical linear delivery system comprises content senders, contentdelivery networks, and content receivers. The deployment of receivers,at scale, often number in the thousands, effectively sharing orallocating the delivery costs across all receiving endpoints, but at thecost of flexibility in the end-to-end content delivery system.

Terrestrial networks and services (wired networks or point to pointnetworks) are another option for content delivery, but cost constraintshave forced the market to limit the use of terrestrial networks tocritical, high value content, such as live sports where the value of thecontent justifies the bandwidth costs and management complexity.

Multicast networks are also utilized for terrestrial delivery of contentin a one-to-many scenario like satellite systems, but these networksrequire complex network bandwidth management and state-of-the-artequipment to be effective.

The need to deliver high-volume content to massive numbers of end usercustomers (receivers) has given rise to OTT (over the top) deliverysystems where each consumer or receiver is effectively pulling its owncontent or data stream from a remote storage site. e.g., Netflix. TheOTT systems effectively employ ABR (adaptive bitrate delivery). Withadaptive bitrate delivery each video stream is segregated intopre-defined units of time each of which is encoded into a multiplicityof formats and resolutions, effectively creating pools of content foreach time segment, such that within the pools there are multipleversions of the same content at varying levels of quality and atdifferent bitrates.

Flexibility is one benefit that accompanies this increase in complexity,including the ability to retrieve alternative content during any timeunit. However, this feature does little to address the core challenge ofdelivering continuous content, at scale, where costs continue torepresent a significant challenge to the adoption of terrestrialnetworks.

An ideal scenario combines the cost efficiency of satellite deliveryservices with the flexibility of OTT delivery, resulting in better costmanagement and the ability to use the terrestrial networks (theinternet) for delivery of content to traditional network endpoints.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

The skilled artisan will understand that the drawings, as describedbelow, are for illustration purposes only. The drawings are not intendedto limit the scope of the present invention in any way.

FIGS. 1 illustrates a system that determines and eliminates thetransmission of redundant data, thereby freeing time slots during whichalternative data can be sent over the network.

FIG. 2 illustrates a flowchart for detecting redundant data.

FIG. 3 indicates a bandwidth requirement (that is, time slots) for adata network.

FIG. 4 indicates redundant data in the content or data stream.

FIG. 5 illustrates the effects on the data stream when the redundantdata has been deleted.

FIG. 6 illustrates delivery of alternative content during the timeintervals that had been occupied by the redundant data.

FIG. 7 illustrates an alternative embodiment wherein a signature enginereceives a media list from a linear processing device.

FIG. 8 illustrates system components similar to those illustrated inFIG. 1 .

DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Before describing in detail the particular methods and apparatusesrelated to optimized delivery of content in an OTT network, it should beobserved that the present invention resides primarily in a novel andnon-obvious combination of elements and process steps. So as not toobscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent tothose skilled in the art, certain conventional elements and steps havebeen presented with lesser detail, while the drawings and thespecification describe in greater detail other elements and stepspertinent to understanding the inventions.

The presented embodiments are not intended to define limits as to thestructures, elements or methods of the inventions, but only to provideexemplary constructions. The embodiments are permissive rather thanmandatory and illustrative rather than exhaustive.

Problem

The challenge with providing new data delivery techniques is overcomingthe very cost effective (when used at scale) satellite delivery system,where the operators (content owners or distributors) often bear thecosts of delivery, while monetization is achieved in the receivernetworks, which effectively places a cap on delivery costs, therebycreating a barrier to entry for competing services. A new deliveryservice that simply leveraged the public networks to replicatetraditional satellite delivery services, would face significant costbarriers that would limit the success of such a new service.

The challenge is creating a system with an efficiency comparable to asatellite system (which has the benefit of being a very efficientmulticast service) over networks that traditionally are not designed norenabled to deliver multicast traffic. Ideally, the new system will offera cost savings over satellite and other traditional linear deliverynetworks.

To further complicate the situation, the traditional receiver used inlinear delivery services comprises equipment that is not designed forthe network conditions found in terrestrial networks, such as jitter,data loss, data congestion and other factors that may impede operationof a terrestrial system. Finally, linear delivery systems are also verycomplex due to the number of systems that must be coordinated upstreamof content consumption.

Solution

There are three factors that must be overcome to create network servicesfor content delivery that can compete effectively with a traditionalsatellite-based system. The first challenge is cost; any new system mustcompete first and foremost with the traditional cost basis of asatellite system, which is considered a cost benchmark for efficiency atscale. The second challenge is operational reliability, while satellitesystems sound technically challenging on paper, they are in fact highlyengineered, stable, and efficient systems for high-scale lineardelivery. The third challenge is compatibility, as any system thatreplaces satellite must be compatible with the existing plantinfrastructure. It is the first two of these three challenges theinventors address with the present invention.

In addressing the primary challenge of cost, the inventive system mustovercome the fact that linear content delivery (e. g., television) isone element of a very complex ecosystem of services, solutions,technology, and infrastructure all of which must run in lock-step withexacting timing requirements, with a further requirement to run inreal-time at each end of the delivery chain, that is the source anddestination nodes.

In this context, real-time means that each television or content framemust be processed in 1/framerate, where 1 represents a second ofmeasured time and framerate represents the display rate at whichplayback must occur. In Europe the framerate may equate to 50 Hz, 25 Hz,etc. In the United States the framerate is 60 Hz.

In an OTT delivery system, the continuous stream of information issegregated into data blocks according to specified time intervals, suchthat a plurality of content frames (pictures or its data equivalent)occupy each time interval.

This data segregation also effects how the data is retrieved from thenetwork. Whereas the receiving system in a linear delivery system isconstantly supplied with a continuous stream of data, the OTT receivingsystem continuously receives updated instructions (in the form of amanifest) advising the content to be retrieved and from where in thenetwork it should be retrieved.

Moving content distribution from a purely linear delivery system to anOTT delivery system also allows buffering within the delivery chain,where the buffering time is equal to the period of one or more timeintervals.

Additionally, in the OTT system the content itself is modified by datacompression for optimal delivery of content, given the constraints ofquality, bitrate, resolution, and targeted bandwidth. In an OTT deliverysystem, the content is constantly being produced, retrieved, andconsumed while the time interval duration, desired content quality, andbitrate targets are predetermined. Thus, one opportunity to materiallyimpact OTT costs is to deliver less content from the source to thedestination.

The present invention resolves the issues by decoupling the intent todeliver the content from the actual delivery of the content. Theinventive system provides a solution that creates a uniquely registeredsignature (or hash value) for each content time interval and stores theresults in a database. Although the device responsible for assigning thesignature acts as a client receiving system, it is not restricted toprocessing the content time intervals in real-time; it can in factprocess content many times faster than real-time.

The registration system can derive signatures at multiple levels of thesource data and by managing each signature separately it can create, andupdate as necessary, a manifest that provides instructions to thereceiving system indicating which content time interval is to beretrieved (retrieved by using the content's registered signature), whenit is to be inserted into the data (content) stream, and from wherecontent should be retrieved. According to the present invention, contentcan be stored locally, in the cloud, or on a parallel (peer) system.

One advantageous by-product of the inventive system is the eliminationof redundant content (a process referred to as deduplication), therebypreserving bandwidth for cost savings or for the delivery of alternativecontent. The time interval during which the redundant data is deletedmay be referred to as a “white space”, with alternative content injectedinto the white spaces.

FIG. 1 depicts a camera 100 as a content source, with the camera outputsupplied to a linear processing device 101 (such as a playout system,master controller, encoder, etc.). The content is then input to andcarried over a linear delivery network (also referred to as a contentdelivery network) 105 to a packaging and manifest creation system 102that creates data packages (also referred to as content time intervalsor data fragments) in a desired format, each comprising content databounded by a predetermined time interval.

The packaging system 102 also creates an original manifest thatindicates the order in which the data packages are to be reassembled ata receiving system 104. Once the data packages are reassembled into alinear data stream at the receiving system 104, the data stream can beconsumed there or input to another network not shown in FIG. 1 .

The data packages and the original manifest are sent from the packagingand manifest creation system 102 to the signature engine 103 via afragmented delivery network 105 b.

The signature engine 103 generates a hash (address) for each datapackage and using the hashes, identifies duplicate data packages(referred to as a deduplication process) within the content stream. Amodified manifest 106 (also referred to as a delivery manifest),generated by the signature engine 103 is input to the receiving system104. The modified manifest identifies the data packages that thereceiving system will need to create a linear content stream. And themodified manifest excludes redundant data packages as determined by thesignature engine by reviewing the hash (address) for each data package.Finally, the modified manifest may include alternative data packages(alternative content) for inclusion into the linear content stream.

White spaces in the data stream that are created by removal of theredundant data packages can be filed with the alternative data packages,including, for example, pre-delivered content (stored at the receivingsystem local cache for later use) and locally resourced content (that isalso store at the receiving system local cache).

As shown in FIG. 1 , the modified manifest 106 is sent to the receivingsystem 104 via the fragmented delivery network 105 b. The modifiedmanifest is used by the receiving system to request content (datapackages) from the packaging system 102, which sends the requested datapackages to the receiving system 104 via a content delivery network 105.The data packages are stored in the local fragment storage cache 108until assembled into a linear data stream at the receiving system 104according to the modified manifest.

The modified manifest also informs the receiving system which networkstorage location, such as a local fragment storage cache 108, stores thedata packages and the order in which the data packages are to bereassembled to create the linear content stream. The local fragmentstorage cache 108 in FIG. 1 is intended to represent any one of thenetwork storage caches in any network.

The receiving system 104 retrieves the data packages from the localfragment storage cache 108 or from the closest storage cache. Thecontent stored at the storage cache 108 includes, active content asreceived from the packaging and manifest creation engine 102,pre-delivered content that had been previously stored in the cache 108,and locally sourced content. The receiving system, using the modifiedmanifest, creates and sends the linear data stream to a downstreamnetwork (not shown) over a linear delivery network 105 c.

Note that the content delivery network 105 is more than a simple datapath as illustrated; in reality it comprises a plurality of receivingsystems 104 that each pull data from the same content delivery network,store data packages at various storage locations, and use the datapackages to create a data stream that is absent redundant data packages,but may include new data packages inserted into the time intervals(white spaces) vacated by the redundant data packages. In oneapplication, each receiving system reassembles the data packages into acontiguous linear data stream and supplies that data stream over thelinear delivery network 105 c to a cable television network fortransmission to end users.

The system of the invention offers an abstraction between the data thatis sent from the source and the data that is retrieved and provided tothe destination. The packaging system 102 sends (pushes) data into thecontent delivery network 105 to be received and stored by each receivingsystem 104. Then each receiving system 104 (only one shown in FIG. 1 )receives the updated manifest from the signature engine and pulls theappropriate data from storage locations on the content delivery network,thereby creating and supplying a linear content stream to a downstreamnetwork (not shown in FIG. 1 ), such as a cable television network asreferred to above.

The signature engine receives data faster than real-time. That is, fromthe camera 100 to the packaging and manifest creation system 102 (seeFIG. 1 ) the data transmission and processing occurs in real-timebecause it is limited by the cameras output data rate (or any othersource system output). The data is then buffered into time-boundfragments by the packaging system 102 and a manifest identifying thosefragments is sent from the packaging system to the signature engine 103at network speed, no longer paced by the clock in the media stream, thatis, by the output data rate of the camera 100.

Segregating the data into fragments provides significant advantages.Consider the analogy of a vinyl record. The data (audio on the vinylrecord) is recorded sequentially with the content recorded against time,in this case the time base is the revolutions per minute of therecording system. Audio samples are continuously appended one afteranother.

The problem with such a system is that any break in time makes thesystem fragile, creating corrupt or distorted data. In a digitaldelivery system (such as digital radio) any break in time can lead tocontent dropouts. Therefore, every aspect of the media delivery chainmust operate in real-time or risk data loss.

To overcome this system fragility and to provide some flexibility,buffering, in the form of time-bounded slices of data, is advantageouslyincluded as a system feature. These slices of data are referred to asfragments (or chunks in common parlance) to identify data (mediacontent, for example) that is no longer handled synchronously.

With the data processed asynchronously (independent of time) the datafragments can be distributed and duplicated, redundant data fragmentsdeleted, and new data fragments substituted into the data stream. Thetime-bound nature of the data in the form of data fragments providesthis flexibility.

For any given media distribution (e.g. a television channel) theinvention leverages the use of predefined units of time to organize alldata into uniform—time bound and independent fragments. This allows thesystem to swap one fragment for another (e.g., providing targetedadvertising). It also allows the system to exploits gaps (white spaces)in the content delivery stream by positioning other content fragmentswithin those white space gaps. Pre-delivered content and locally-sourcedcontent can also be stored in the local fragment storage cache 108 andthis content can be retrieved for insertion into a content stream duringa white space.

The system of the invention converts linear data streams (unbroken,sequential) from a source (the camera 100 in FIG. 1 ) into time-bounddata fragments. The signature engine 103 in FIG. 1 identifies each datafragment by assigning a unique signature to each one (preferably createdby a hashing algorithm). All the data fragments can then be pushed intothe network according to the updated manifest that informs eachreceiving system which data fragments to retrieve, where to retrievethem, and also the order of data fragments in the created linear datastream.

The content registry 107 in FIG. 1 stores signatures (hashes) of theoriginal content, in the form of data packets, and the content stored atthe local cache 108 of each receiving system. The signature engine 103,using data stored in the content registry 107, continuously compares thesignatures of the incoming data fragments against what is in thereceivers' cache.

The signature engine can also utilize the white spaces to insert othercontent data that is pre-delivered (i.e., delivered and stored inadvance of use) in the receiver's cache. The modified manifest instructsthe receiving system to pull this pre-stored content, as well as othercontent, from a network storage location to create a linear data streamfor downstream networks.

For example, assume a premium movie channel is distributing the samemovie in a loop. The signature engine ensures that each receiving systemhas a copy of the movie in its cache and therefore instructs thereceiving system to retrieve the movie (data) from its local cache. Itis unnecessary to distribute the movie for each loop. Each receivingsystem must create a constant, linear output, but the source of themovie (data) is irrelevant; the source can be the local cache(pre-delivered local content) or the network stream as stored in thelocal cache. And in this case, the delivery of redundant content to thereceiving station is avoided since the content is already available atthe receiving station local cache.

And consider the following example using the modified manifest. Areceiving system uses a modified manifest to select from the localcache, data package A and data package B, and data package C, and datapackage E. But data package D is omitted because it is duplicate withdata package B. The receiving system creates the linear data streamusing data packages A, B, C, and E and sends it on to the next network.

In another situation, the receiving system creates a new contiguous datastream comprising data packages A, B, C, B, and E. Here B is the same adand data packages A, C, and E are parts of a television show. The “B”data package is received only once at the receiving system, but airedmultiple times during a single television show.

For an identified time interval of content to be available to thesystem, that content must exist both as an identity in the database ofthe signature engine 103 of FIG. 1 and in storage at the local fragmentstorage cache 108 of FIG. 1 . If those conditions are satisfied then thesystem can create the modified manifest 106 (see FIG. 1 ) from theoriginal manifest, which advises the receiving system that it no longerneeds to retrieve certain data packages from the source since the datapackage(s) is already available in the local fragment storage 108, thatis, locally to the receiver 104. The data packages may be stored atother network locations that may be accessible to one or more receivingsystems.

FIG. 2 illustrates the basic system operation in the form of a flowchart200 with reference to specific content, that is a video segment. At astep 201 a video segment (also referred to as a data segment or acontent time interval) is received at the signature engine 103 and asignature generated for that segment at a step 202. Preferably, thesignature is generated based on a hashing algorithm.

The generated signature is compared to signatures at the receivingsystem (stored within the local cache) at step 212. These local cachesignatures are stored in the content registry database 107 of FIG. 1 .

If the generated signature does not match any of the stored signatures(generating a negative result from decision step 214) then the videosegment represented by the generated signature is not stored in thelocal caches and therefore the original manifest is sent from thesignature engine 103 to the receiving system 104, where it will be usedto request this video segment from the packaging system 102 and willalso be used to create the linear delivery stream at the receivingsystem 104.

If the decision from the decision step 214 is affirmative, then thecontent already exists in the local cache (it is therefore redundantcontent) and the manifest is modified to delete reference to thisredundant content. Now the modified manifest will be used to requestvideo segments from the packaging system 102, but there is no referencein the modified manifest to the redundant content. The modified manifestwill also be used to create the linear delivery stream at the receivingsystem 104, but again, the redundant content will not appear in thelinear data stream. The white space created by omission of the redundantcontent can be used to transfer other content.

FIG. 3 illustrates an exemplary signal profile of a single receivingsystem over time. Time ticks are set forth on the X axis. The requestedcontent is retrieved (and stored) from the content delivery network, asinitiated by the receiving system, in bursts, followed by periods of nosignal activity. As shown, a signal (content or data) is transmittedover the network during six different time intervals (including the timeinterval 10:23:24 to 10:23:26 and the time interval 10:23:28 to10:23:30). The data transmissions are indicative of the bandwidthrequirements for delivery of signals during typical time intervals.

The deduplication process of the present invention avoids thetransmission of redundant data from a source (the packaging and manifestcreation system 102 in FIG. 1 ) to a destination (the receiving system104 in FIG. 1 ). And in another embodiment, omits inclusion of duplicatedata in the linear data or content stream that is generated by thereceiving system.

In FIG. 4 , two content time intervals are identified as duplicates bythe signature engine as stored within the local fragment storage 108 ofFIG. 1 . The redundant data, as indicated by dashed lines, was sentbetween the time interval 10:23:24 to 10:23:26 and the interval 10:23:28to 10:23:30. The manifest is modified and using the modified manifest,the receiving system will not request the redundant content from thepackaging system 102 or in another embodiment the redundant content willnot be included in the linear data stream created by the receivingsystem.

FIG. 5 depicts the signal created by avoiding transmission of theduplicate data, that is, the two redundant content time intervals fromFIG. 4 are absent from the FIG. 5 the data stream. FIG. 5 depicts thebandwidth profile of the receiver when the two time intervals ofredundant data have been eliminated from the manifest, thereby creatingan extended period with no network activity, i.e., white spaces.

This lack of network activity during the white spaces represents excessnetwork capacity that can be used to pre-deliver content to thereceiving system. This is accomplished by the signature engine sendingthe receiving system an updated or modified manifest that informs thereceiving system of this new content and from where it can be retrievedand stored for later use. Or the new content can be immediately insertedinto the current linear stream during the time interval formerlyoccupied by duplicate or redundant data.

In another embodiment, locally-produced content is inserted into thewhite spaces.

The content occupying the former white spaces is indicated in FIG. 6 bythe bold signal lines.

The above-described embodiment optimizes the delivery of media content,in particular by removing redundant media content. In fact, these sameconcepts can be applied to the streaming of any data. In particularthese concepts can be applied to any highly repetitive data that isdelivered in real-time, such as data delivered by IoT sensors.

The described approach may be considered a form of data compression,where data compression is defined as the ability to reduce the data filesize by taking advantage of the statistical redundancy within the datastream. For example, instead of sending data as 1111111111, adictionary-based symbolic replacement is sent instead, i.e., send thecharacter “A” and it replaces the ten ones in the original data stream.

But in the world of streaming information using such a symbolicreplacement is a difficult process because the data is constantlychanging and the information represented by the streaming data must besent (transferred to a receiving node) in real-time.

Thus, one approach for reducing the required bandwidth in streaming datauses the inventive approach where the real-time data stream is brokeninto windows of time (also referred to as data windows or data fragmentsor data packages) and each window is assigned a signature. One elementof the system compares the signatures (representing a data window) thatare to be sent against the signatures previously sent and stored at thereceiving system (stored while awaiting transmission to anothernetwork).

When the signatures match, the receiving system is advised that the datawindow that was to have been sent was previously sent and therefore thatdata window does not need to be transferred again. The stored matchingdata window can be transferred to a next node in the network or to adifferent network at the appropriate time or when requested. Since thissignature/data match is detected before sending the second data windowthe time interval during which the second window was to have been sentis now open and alternative data can be sent during that interval.

For this technique to perform without error, the receiving systemobviously must store all data received until instructed that it is nolonger needed.

FIG. 7 illustrates an embodiment wherein the signature engine 103receives media lists (from the linear processing device 101) via a path120 that also identify fragments and the content from which they aresourced. The list may be used to identify fragments that are not in thecurrent delivery chain, but may be required in the future. Thesefragments are interleaved with existing data flows using the white spacegaps in bandwidth to pre-deliver content to the content deliverynetwork. The signature engine can release a modified manifest which canbe a mix of pre-delivered content, active content, and locally resourcedcached content from the local fragment storage 108.

FIG. 8 illustrates a system similar to FIG. 1 . The signature engine 103generates a unique signature for each data package, compares eachsignature to signatures representing data packages already available tothe receiving system. If a signature match is identified a modifiedmanifest is created (omitting the redundant data package) and if a matchis not detected the original manifest is sent to the receiving system.

The receiving system 104 receives a manifest (either the original ormodified/updated manifest). If a data package on the manifest is storedlocally it is retrieved from local storage (local fragment storage 108)and if not available locally the data package is retrieved from thecontent delivery network 105.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method for providing content as a linearcontent stream, the method comprising: receiving and segregating thecontent into data packages; identifying each data package with a uniquesignature; responsive to a request from a receiving system, receivingfirst data packages at the receiving system; storing the first datapackages; creating a modified manifest that identifies each data packageaccording to its unique signature, indicates a location for each datapackage, and instructs the order in which to assemble identified datapackages to create the linear content stream; creating the linearcontent stream as directed by the modified manifest; wherein anyredundant data packages within the first data packages are excluded fromthe modified manifest and thereby excluded from the linear contentstream; and wherein white spaces of open time intervals are created inthe linear data stream by omission of the redundant data packages, andwherein the white spaces are filled with alternative content.
 2. Themethod of claim 1, wherein content comprises media content or datacontent.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein the alternative contentcomprises pre-delivered content or locally-sourced content.
 4. Themethod of claim 2, wherein the pre-delivered content was previouslysupplied to the receiving system and stored for future use.
 5. Themethod of claim 1, wherein the unique signature comprises a hash basedon contents of a data package.
 6. The method of claim 1, furthercomprising creating an original manifest based on received first datapackages, wherein the modified manifest is derived from the originalmanifest by omitting redundant data packages and adding the alternativecontent.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein the first data packages areretrieved from a content delivery network.
 8. The method of claim 1,further comprising responsive to a request from the receiving system,receiving second data packages at the receiving system, wherein thesecond data packages are retrieved from a storage cache, whereinredundant data packages within the first data packages and the seconddata packages are excluded from the modified manifest and therebyexcluded from the linear content stream.
 9. The method of claim 8,wherein the storage cache comprises a local storage cache.
 10. Themethod of claim 1, wherein the unique signature of each data package isderived from a hashing algorithm operating on contents of each datapackage, and wherein redundant data packages are determined based onidentical unique signatures.
 11. A method for providing content as alinear content stream, the method comprising: receiving and segregatingthe content into data packages; identifying each data package with aunique signature; responsive to a request from a receiving system,receiving first data packages and second data packages at the receivingsystem, the first data packages supplied from a content delivery networkand the second data packages supplied from a storage cache; storing thefirst and second data packages; creating a modified manifest thatidentifies each one of the first and second data packages according toits unique signature, indicates a location for each one of the first andsecond data packages, and instructs the order in which to assembleidentified first and second data packages to create the linear contentstream; creating the linear content stream as directed by the modifiedmanifest; wherein any redundant data packages within the first datapackages and second data packages are excluded from the modifiedmanifest and thereby excluded from the linear content stream; andwherein white spaces of open time intervals are created in the lineardata stream by omission of the redundant data packages, and wherein thewhite spaces are filled with alternative data packages comprisingalternative content.
 12. The method of claim 11, wherein the alternativecontent comprises media content or data content.
 13. The method of claim11, wherein the alternative content comprises pre-delivered content orlocally-sourced content.
 14. The method of claim 13, wherein thepre-delivered content was previously supplied to the receiving systemand stored for future use.
 15. The method of claim 11, wherein theunique signature comprises a hash based on contents of a data package.16. The method of claim 11, further comprising creating an originalmanifest based on received first data packages and received second datapackages, wherein the modified manifest is derived from the originalmanifest by omitting redundant data packages and adding the alternativecontent.
 17. The method of claim 11, wherein the first data packages areretrieved from a content delivery network and the second data packagesare retrieved from a storage cache.
 18. The method of claim 11, whereinthe unique signature of each one of the first data packages and each oneof the second data packages is derived from a hashing algorithmoperating on contents of each data package, and wherein redundant datapackages are determined based on identical unique signatures.
 19. Amethod for providing content to a network, the method comprising: asource for collecting data and segregating the data into data packages,the content represented by the data packages; identifying each datapackage with a unique signature; creating a manifest that identifieseach data package according to its unique signature and indicates alocation for each data package; a receiving system requesting datapackages according to the manifest; providing requested data packages tothe receiving system, the requested data packages retrieved from astorage location or from a content delivery network, absent redundantdata packages, wherein redundant data packages are determined byidentical signatures; and wherein white spaces of open time intervalsare created by omission of redundant data packages, and wherein thewhite spaces are filled with alternative content.
 20. The method ofclaim 19, wherein the alternative content comprises pre-deliveredcontent or locally-sourced content as media content or data content.